A Breathable Fibrous Membrane with Coaxially Heterogeneous Conductive Networks toward Personal Thermal Management and Electromagnetic Interference Shielding.

Abstract

The expeditious growth of wearable electronic devices has boomed the development of versatile smart textiles for personal health-related applications. In practice, integrated high-performance systems still face challenges of compromised breathability, high cost, and complicated manufacturing processes. Herein, a breathable fibrous membrane with dual-driven heating and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance is developed through a facile process of electrospinning followed by targeted conformal deposition. The approach constructs a robust hierarchically coaxial heterostructure consisting of elastic polymers as supportive "core" and dual-conductive components of polypyrrole and copper sulfide (CuS) nanosheets as continuous "sheath" at the fiber level. The CuS nanosheets with metal-like electrical conductivity demonstrate the promising potential to substitute the expensive conductive nano-materials with a complex fabricating process. The as-prepared fibrous membrane exhibits high electrical conductivity (70.38 S cm-1), exceptional active heating effects, including solar heating (saturation temperature of 69.7 °C at 1 sun) and Joule heating (75.2 °C at 2.9V), and impressive EMI shielding performance (50.11dB in the X-band), coupled with favorable air permeability (161.4mm s-1 at 200Pa) and efficient water vapor transmittance (118.9g m-2 h). This work opens up a new avenue to fabricate versatile wearable devices for personal thermal management and health protection.